On Sunday, February 19, Elaine Egan, our Brand Ambassador, hosted 3 AMAs with Nayiem Willems about the new Solar debit card. They were held in the Türkiye, Korea and Global Telegram channels. Community questions were collected before the AMAs and passed to Nayiem to answer on the day.
You can read a transcript of the questions and answers here.
Prepared Community Questions
Q: What type of documents will I need for KYC?
A: KYC will be handled by Onfido. A driver’s licence, national ID card or passport is sufficient. Some countries don’t show the personal number on the driver’s licence. If that is the case you should use another document for KYC.
Q: How do you load your Solar card with SXP?
A: You can send your SXP to the address in the Solar Card app. Then you can convert your SXP to any supported fiat currency and load it to your card.
Q: Do I need an IBAN to use the Solar card?
A: Having an IBAN account is an optional feature and requires additional address verification.
Q: Will there be any cash-back or reward programs?
A: Yes, there will be several cash-back and reward programs. The cash-back percentage will depend on the amount of SXP held within the Solar Card app. The exact details will be available once we are closer to the launch.
Q: How do the monthly fees compare with other crypto cards in the market?
A: We compared the transaction fees, exchange fees and subscription fees with competitors. We can safely say that we compete with other businesses in the same industry. Fees will depend on your subscription and how much SXP you hold in the app.
Q: Please explain the difference between the Solar wallet and the Solar card app?
A: The difference is that with the Solar wallet, you access your keys and decide which block producers to vote for. With the Solar Card app, you can enable “voting”. The entity behind the Solar Card app decides which block producer to vote for. This makes it more user-friendly to newcomers. With the Solar Card app, multiple currencies are supported. Please note that you won’t have the keys to the wallets in the Solar Card app. The wallets are in control by the card provider, Choise.
Q: What made you choose Choise as the company to work with on the Solar card? Did you look at any other competitors?
A: We’ve been looking at many other card providers. Our priority was to focus on customisation and global support. With Choise, we can easily add custom features to the app and support more than 140 countries.
Q: How do you see the Solar card as a benefit to the community?
A: The Solar Card brings SXP back to its roots. Many SXP holders are familiar with the Swipe card and perhaps initially entered the project because of its use case, we are bringing this use case back. Along with Core 5.0, and the many upcoming features of Solar, SXP will be stronger than ever with many utilities.
Q: You mention concierge services as a feature of the Solar card. What are concierge services, and how do ordinary people take advantage of them?
A: There is a 24/7 Concierge service that you can use for shopping services, luxury product procurement, hotel discounts, 1st class and business flight discounts up to 30%. Black car private airport transfer, car rentals, exotic car rental, event/ticket access, restaurant booking, aviation or yacht booking you name it! The 24/7 service is more than just helping users with account or card issues.
Q: I have signed up for the Early Bird program. How long will it be before I can start using the debit card?
A: We are targeting Q2 this year. The official release date will be confirmed at the end of Q1 and will depend on how many users we can gather during the early bird program. Our goal is to have at least 1000 paid users by the end of Q1.
Q: Are there any charges if I lose my card?
A: It will depend on the type of subscription you have. Losing a plastic card will cost around 9 or 10 Euros. Losing a metal card will cost more. The exact numbers will be confirmed later.
Q: Do you have plans for any referral programs or rewards if we introduce new people to the Solar Card?
A: Yes. We will introduce several referral programs at the beginning of Q2. You are free to discuss these things within the Solar community or provide suggestions for the referral programs. Our idea is to offer 5–10 Euros to the person that refers another user and a 5–10 Euro bonus to the user that signs up using a referral code. (obviously, after they successfully sign-up for a year subscription with a valid KYC.)
Q: Can I earn interest on my crypto if I hold it on the Solar card?
A: There are special programs provided by Choise that will earn you interest on other cryptos. For SXP, you can click on the vote button, and the Dokdo entity will automatically select the block producers for you that contribute to the network and provide a reasonable share of their block rewards.
Q: Can I pay for my card monthly?
A: After the 1st year, you will be able to pay for the subscription monthly.
Q: What are the benefits of having a Solar debit card?
A: Unlike our competitors. The Solar Card is available in more than 140 countries and it has many unique features. The concierge services are one thing, but the strongest feature is that we can provide dedicated IBAN accounts to users around the globe. This means you can easily collect your salary in your IBAN account or pay utility bills.
Q: The card prices seem high to me, why should community members pay these prices and what features make the Solar card attractive?
A: As mentioned above, the Solar Card is attractive because of its many features. The card prices seem high but unlike our competitors, you don’t need to stake a ridiculous amount of currency. It is possible to “stake” your SXP to order a particular subscription. On the backend, it means we would have to use your SXP to vote for block producers on the network and use this method to receive block rewards and cover any expenses. We believe it’s more ethical for you to pay for a subscription, enjoy all the benefits, keep all the block rewards for yourself and decide what to do with your funds. But we are open to any suggestions.
Q: Will the card have partnerships with e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Aliexpress, etc.?
A: We have several potential partnerships in the pipeline, but these do not include Amazon or Aliexpress. Follow Solar and Dokdo on Twitter to learn more about partnership announcements. (Social Media channels are listed at the end of this article)
Q: Regarding the IBAN, will it be used by creating a new bank account? Will this bank be a bank located in Turkey or a European-sourced bank account?
A: All matters regarding the IBAN will be managed by Choise. They are an established, experienced financial institution which is one of the many reasons we chose to work with them.
Q: Is it possible to impose a requirement to hold a certain amount of SXP as a prerequisite for better cards or better opportunities, as many cards do?
A: Unlike Swipe, we did not have the opportunity to have an ICO or issue X amount of SXP. For this reason, we are currently not able to provide a complete subscription depending on the amount of SXP you are holding, since expenses such as card production, delivery, services and licences still need to be paid. But we are open to any suggestions you might have. Though, holding SXP in your Solar Card app will give you benefits such as a reduction in exchange fees, transaction fees and many other things. Future subscriptions (after the early bird program) can also only be paid in SXP.
Q: Will we be able to withdraw cash from all ATMs in our country? (From ATMs that say Visa or Mastercard)
A: Yes.
Q: If I have those coins (SXP, BTC, USDT, ETH, BNB) stored in this solar debit card, will I be able to use them to make purchases directly, just like with a normal debit card?
A: Yes, you can convert them to a fiat currency and load the fiat currency on your card to make purchases. There are options where you can automatically convert to fiat and load a card when it drops below a certain amount.
Q: Are you planning to do the same as Swipe and burn SXP from the card processing fees?
A: While we are actively promoting the Solar Card from the Solar Foundation. The Solar Foundation does not promote or endorse any of the burn features. There are burn features and these are facilitated by the company where you sign-up for the subscription and all the agreements regarding the Solar Card product. This company is Dokdo and you are free to ask these questions in the Dokdo telegram channels.
We then opened the channels to take questions directly from the community.
Community Questions on the Day
Q: According to the introduction of Solar Card, it says KRW is also supported, but in the case of Paycoin, it was noted that it was difficult to issue a real-name account after receiving a warning from the Korean Financial Services Commission, is there no such risk for Solar Card?
A: We have been informed about this issue by partners. The information on the website has been changed and the exact date for KRW support will be confirmed later.
I will be visiting Korea again soon and preparing documents for KoFIU to comply with local regulations and anything necessary for KRW support.
Q: Who designed the Solar Card?
A: The Solar Card was designed by block producer “Kimchi” inspired by community suggestions.
Q: Can we transfer staking revenues to the Solar card? If the stake and card are linked and is there a plan to transfer the stake income to the card?
A: You are free to transfer your SXP wherever you want. So yes, if you are voting for a block producer. You can send your block rewards to your card wallet.
Q: Is there a risk that one day my solar card wallet will be completely emptied as a result of Choise having the security keys?
A: Choise is a regulated and licensed entity. It is the same as keeping your funds on crypto.com or an exchange.
Conclusion
The AMAs were very in-depth as you can see. We received some great questions from the community that covered a wide range of topics. We can confidently say that everybody learned a lot about the features and benefits of the Solar debit card during these AMAs.
The number of sign-ups for the card has been very encouraging so far and we are certain that the card is going to be a huge success for Solar. We want to thank our community for supporting us and we encourage everyone to ask questions and provide feedback.
If you have enjoyed this article please give it some claps!
Follow Solar:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SolarNetwork
Medium: https://blog.solar.org
Telegram: https://t.me/Solar & https://t.me/@Solar_Network
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialSolarNetwork
Follow Dokdo:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dokdo_sh
Medium: https://medium.com/@dokdo_sh
Telegram: https://t.me/dokdo_official